GRANVILLE, Ohio — Eva Revesz, a visiting assistant professor at Denison University, settled in
to an evening of grading papers as she had so many evenings before.

The assignment was a short, getting-to-know-you, in-class paper. But it turned out to be one
that neither she nor her student Samantha Seibel will ever forget.

It was the second day of the new academic year, and Revesz had asked her class of 20 or so
freshmen to answer a few questions: What are your interests on campus? Why are you taking this
class? How would you assess your writing ability?

She was teaching a first-year seminar course, a Denison requirement that offers a wide variety
of topics intended to teach new students to listen, learn, research and write. The topic was “
Genocide in the 20th Century.”

Revesz skimmed through the first few papers and reached for another. “Hello,” it said at the
top. “My name is Sammy Seibel, and I am from a small town in northwestern Ohio called
Defiance."

She couldn’t yet put a face to the name. She continued reading.

“I chose this course because my grandfather Col. Richard Seibel fought in World War II and
liberated Mauthausen concentration camp.”

Revesz stopped. Life just halted, if only for a nanosecond. It couldn’t be. She reread the
line.

“I was like, ‘Wow!’ ” she recalled last week. She
had to call her father.

Andrew Reeves, who is nearly 90 years old and a retired professor, lives in Grosse Pointe,
Mich., where he’d raised his family since the mid-1950s. His life, however, was shaped before his
arrival on U.S. soil — in a Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria.

“Dad, you’ll never believe this,” Revesz said. She told him about her class and about this kid —
Sammy, whoever she was — and her paper.

“My father’s reaction was like, ‘Very interesting. What do you know, what do you know?’ ... I
was more excited than he was. At this point in his life, he kind of stands above it. He’s become
very complacent. I was kind of disappointed.”

But she’d grown accustomed to his behavior toward his days in the labor camps. He tells the
stories of his liberation, mostly the good stories, Revesz said. Not so much about the starvation,
the death marches, the lice so thick his clothes moved like an agitated ant hill; or the family he
lost, including his favorite cousin, Ava, for whom he named his first daughter.

Reeves, who couldn’t be reached for this story, is now “American through and through,” his
daughter said. He changed his name to Reeves to be more American. (She changed hers back to embrace
her Hungarian ancestry. He thought she was silly.)

Two days later, the class met again. Which one was Sammy? Revesz began discussing the reading
she’d assigned. She asked the class a question. A young woman raised her hand and identified
herself, as requested. Sammy.

Revesz acknowledged Sammy’s answer and then said, “Oh, and by the way. I have something to tell
you.”

Her professor then explained that her father had been a prisoner — a survivor — at
Mauthausen.

“It was exciting and dramatic and awkward, too,” Seibel said. “All of a sudden, all the
attention was on me. I didn’t know what to do.”

When she got home, she immediately contacted her dad. “I Skyped him. He was sitting on his bed
with his laptop. I remember telling him, and his reaction was pretty much the same as mine. His
eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. He was just like, ‘No way!’ ”

Seibel’s grandfather died when she was 4 years old. But she has heard the stories her whole
life, read the articles, seen the video of her famous grandfather Col. Richard Seibel online.

“It’s almost like he’s alive, the stories are so vivid,” she said. “And it was so exciting to
tell my dad because he’s so proud of his dad. It’s just so interesting that, all these years later,
I am still a witness to that legacy.”

The coincidence that Seibel and Revesz would breach the miles and the decades to intersect on a
college campus in a Licking County village “is just unthinkable,” Seibel said. “I’m amazed by it
all, and it’s pretty cool.”